by Max Brand
He led his horse slowly down the passage, and the shouts and pleadings of Silver Pete died out behind him. At the mouth of the passage his greatest shout rang no louder than the hum of a bee.
Grimly silent was the conclave in Billy Hillier’s saloon. That evening, while the sunset was still red in the west, the Ghost had stopped the stage scarcely a mile from Murrayville, shot the sawed-off shotgun out of the very hands of the only guard who dared to raise a weapon, and had taken a valuable packet of the “dust.” They sent out a posse at once, which rode straight for Hunter’s Cañon, and arrived there just in time to see the fantom horseman disappear in the mouth of the ravine. They had matched speed with that rider before, and they gave up the vain pursuit. That night they convened in Hillier’s, ostensibly to talk over new plans for apprehending the outlaw, but they soon discovered that nothing new could be said. Even Collins was silent, twisting his glass of whisky between his fingers and scowling at his neighbors along the bar. It was small wonder, therefore, if not a man smiled when a singing voice reached them from a horseman who cantered down the street:
“I don’t expect no bloomin’ tears;
The only thing I ask
Is something for a monument
In the way of a whisky flask.”
The sound of the gallop died out before the saloon, the door opened, and Geraldine staggered into the room, carrying a small but apparently ponderous burden in his arms. He lifted it to the bar which creaked under the weight.
“Step up and liquor!” cried Geraldine in a ringing voice. “I got the Ghost!”
A growl answered him. It was a topic over which they were not prepared to laugh.
“Get out and tell that to your hoss, son,” said one miner. “We got other things to think about than your damfoolery.”
“Damfoolery?” echoed Geraldine. “Step up and look at the loot! Dust, boys, real dust!”
He untied the mouth of a small buckskin bag and shoved it under the nose of the man who had spoken to him. The latter jumped back with a yell and regarded Geraldine with fascinated eyes.
“By God, boys,” he said, “it is dust!”
Geraldine fought off the crowd with both hands.
“All mine!” he cried. “Mine, boys! You voted the loot to the man who caught the Ghost!”
“And where’s the Ghost?” asked several men together.
“Geraldine,” said Collins, pushing through the crowd, “if this is another joke we’ll hang you for it!”
“It’s too heavy for a joke,” grinned Geraldine. “I’ll put the loot in your hands, Collins, and when I show you the Ghost I’ll ask for it again.”
Collins caught his shoulder in a strong grasp.
“Honest to God?” he asked. “Have you got him?”
“I have,” said Geraldine, “and I’ll give him to you on one ground.”
“Out with it,” said Collins.
“Well,” said Geraldine, “when you see him you’ll recognize him. He’s been one of us!”
“I knew it,” growled Collins; “some dirty dog that lived with us and knifed us in the back all the time.”
“But, remember,” said Geraldine, “he never shot to kill, and that’s why you sha’n’t string him up. Is it a bargain?”
“It’s a bargain,” said Collins, “we’ll turn him over to the sheriff. Are you with me, boys?”
They yelled their agreement, and in thirty seconds every man who had a horse was galloping after Collins and Geraldine. At the shrub beside the wall of the valley Geraldine drew rein, and they followed him in an awed and breathless body into the passage.
“I went out scouting on my own hook,” explained Geraldine, as he went before them, “and I saw the Ghost ride down the cañon and disappear in here. I followed him.”
“Followed up this passage all alone?” queried Collins.
“I did,” said Geraldine.
“And what did you do to him?”
“You’ll see in a minute. There was only one shot fired, and it came from his gun.”
They turned the sharp angle and entered the lighted end of the passage. In another moment they crowded into the cave and stood staring at the tightly bound figure of Silver Pete. His eyes burned furiously into the face of Geraldine. The men swarmed about his prostrate body.
“Untie his feet, boys,” said Collins, “and we’ll take him back. Silver Pete, you can thank your lucky stars that Geraldine made us promise to turn you over to the law.”
“How did you do it?” he continued, turning to Geraldine.
“I’m not very handy with a gun,” said the Ghost, “so I tackled him with my fists. Look at that cut on his jaw. That’s where I hit him!”
A little murmur of wonder passed around the group. One of them cut the rope which bound Pete’s ankles together, and two more dragged him to his feet.
“Stand up like a man, Pete,” said Collins, “and thank Geraldine for not cutting out your rotten heart!”
But Silver Pete, never moving his eyes from the face of the Ghost, broke into a long and full-throated laugh.
“Watch him, boys!” called Collins sharply. “He’s going looney! Here, Jim, grab on that side and I’ll take him here. Now start down the tunnel.”
Yet, as they went forward, the rumbling laugh of the gun-fighter broke out again and again.
“I got to leave you here,” said the Ghost, when they came out from the mouth of the passage. “My way runs east, and I got a date at Tuxee for to- night. I’ll just trouble you for that there slicker with the dust in it, Collins.”
Without a word the vigilance men unstrapped the heavy packet which he had tied behind his saddle. He fastened it behind Geraldine’s saddle and then caught him by the hand.
“Geraldine,” he said, “you’re a queer cuss! We haven’t made you out yet, but we’re going to take a long look at you when you come back to Murrayville to- morrow.”
“When I come back,” said Geraldine, “you can look at me as long as you wish.”
His eyes changed, and he laid a hand on Collins’s shoulder.
“Take it from me,” he said softly, “you’ve given me your word that the boys won’t do Pete dirt. Remember, he never plugged any of you. He’s got his hands tied now, Collins, and if any of the boys try fancy stunts with him — maybe I’ll be making a quick trip back from Tuxee. Savvy?”
His eyes held Collins for the briefest moment, and then he swung into his saddle and rode east with the farewell yells of the posse ringing after him. By the time they were in their saddles Geraldine had topped a hill several hundred yards away and his figure was black against the moon. A wind from the east blew back his song to them faintly:
“I don’t expect no bloomin’ tears;
The only thing I ask
Is something for a monument
In the way of a whisky flask.”
“Look at him, boys,” said Collins, turning in his saddle. “If it wasn’t for what’s happened to-night, I’d lay ten to one that that was the Ghost on the wing for his hiding-place!”
THE END
THE SECOND CHANCE
LOUISE CAMPBELL WAKENED in the night with a racing heart and smallness of breath, as though the darkness were stealing her life. The panic had jerked her upright in bed before her hand found the electric switch. Even with the light on, she still felt the horror near and seemed to see a withdrawing vapor of darkness. Two bells sounded so far and faint on the ship that they were hardly more real than thought. It was one o’clock. Only an hour and a half before the heavy drug had closed her eyes. Now she could only sleep with a dangerous quantity of the narcotic. The one mercy for which she could thank God was that in late June He sent the dawn early.
She lay back on the pillows. The doctors told her that complete relaxation was almost the equivalent of sleep, but she could not relax until she had found a subject for pleasant thought, and of late she had searched too often among her memories, as one might flutter the pages of a thick book, without finding the
happy places. That fumbling through the past became a frenzy. She tried to look forward, but the daydreams also, which had been the most soothing prelude to sleep, those sky-blue fancies which often had made her laugh softly in her bed, would come to her no more. She was walled within the continually shrinking space of the present moment.
On deck breathing would be easier, but the thought of making the effort to rise and dress made her heart shudder with weakness. Yet, she realized, to lie awake in the cabin would be a nightmare more horrible because it was conscious. Experience helped her as a whip helps a slave. She got up at once and went to the clothes closet.
On the left were lounging gowns and dressing robes and exquisite colorful embroideries. In fact, that had been her chosen style of dress for all occasions of the day or night until her illness of three years before. She had been able to dress like a girl then because Time had scarcely handled her for thirty-seven years, leaving to her always the same blue and golden beauty. But, between the days when she entered and left the hospital, his fingers had bruised her face — horribly beneath the eyes and striking all of the sweet childishness from her mouth. Until then, she had spent her days like an immortal — and now she must dress in black to escape observation. Over the gowns she ran her desolate hands to make a choice among the shadows. Her body was still fresh, lovely, and young, but she dared not show so much as the grace of her arms through any film of gauze or lace, the contrast so darkened the guilty ugliness of her face.
It was only when she was done that she ventured to put on the bright things in her wardrobe. In that way, she sometimes could forget the picture that waited when she lifted her glance to a mirror. She could avoid the glass except when she was doing her hair or putting on the dull make-up with which she tried to obscure her features a little, but, whenever she had to confront that new image, strange thoughts would fly in her mind. It was as though a witch had cursed her; or again, because of the courage that was her virtue, she let conscience say that her new face was that of the evil she had done. It was the immediate cause of the change that she revolted against most, for surely all modern good sense tells women that they need not have children unless they wish to. The operation itself had been simple enough; it was the unlucky complications afterward that gave her a month of agony which was written in her face. When she went into the hospital, she looked not more than her late twenties; when she came out, she seemed twenty years older.
So she dressed herself in black. When she drew on her slippers, she smiled a little because she remembered the day on the beach when Anton Wolf, the strong man, had held both her feet in the grasp of one hand and had lifted her above his head so that she stood at a balance with her outstretched arms while the crowd took breath before it could shout. The Sunday supplements had rejoiced the world with that picture, but, ah, what a pity that the camera had not been able to show the millions the blue and gold of her beauty and the sunny gilding of her body! Why had not color photography been perfected? Science, like a stupid wastrel, had let her slip through the fingers of time, and all that the world had of her was the gibbering shadow of Louise Lombard which had walked across some miles of Hollywood negatives, a poor, poor ghost.
She put on a beret to cover the shine of her hair and a cloak whose stiffened collar could be drawn like a mask over her face. Before she left the room, habit made her glance over it. She could escape from it now, but she would have to return. The time had gone when every step she took might be toward an adventure. The men were lost to her; she was anchored in herself. And then her eye lighted on the full vial of veronal. Why had she never thought of it before? That, of course, was the easy way out — so far out that there would never be any return. She picked up the vial and went up at once to the promenade deck.
There was a moon above a softly blowing mist, and the sea flowed quietly away beneath with a tarnished sheen. She gripped the rail with both hands and looked up. If there had been one star, or the thinnest edge of the moon’s brilliance, she would have felt that she could live; but a denser fog rolled in, and she breathed the cold of it. She had tried before, many times in the last three years since the day when Eddie Steinworth had told her that she no longer was worth a damn in the movies. Not that the movies mattered so much; men had been her profession, her career, her triumph, but now, when men looked at her, they narrowed their eyes and disgust curled their lips. Once she had lain down with a gas tube between her teeth, but the first sweet, horrible taste of the stuff ended that attempt. She had tried a revolver, steadying her wrist with the grasp of her left hand, forcing the gun up until the chilly lips of it touched her temple. She had leaned for an hour at a fortieth story widow, but her arms had stiffened and would not let her slip away into freedom. But veronal would make everything so easy.
She went into the smoking room, empty at this hour except for a poker game of five at one of the larger corner tables and two other smaller groups. She sat at a side table with her back toward the rest, the collar of her coat well raised as Bliss, the fat-faced smoking-room steward, approached. The flow of his body into a great, outstanding belly filled her with an unnamable disgust. He put down a small plate of sandwiches, a silver dish whose compartments contained salted almonds, green olives, little roasted peanuts.
“Take that stuff away!” she commanded.
“Certainly, madame,” said Bliss, picking up the dishes. He did not need to exercise any self-control; the fat swinishness of his good nature was never perturbed.
“Bring me a French vermouth,” she ordered.
“With lemon peel?”
“Yes,” she answered.
Of all her men, what one would she wish to have filling the chair opposite? Those she had married and divorced were most easily brought to mind. They were all alive; any one of them might actually be on this ship and that was strange, considering how dead they were in her mind. Even Barney Shay, who had married her on her eighteenth birthday, was only sixtyish now. She thought of him almost with kindness because, unlike the others, he had not learned to hate her after she drained him of money and cast him off. Cecil Warren, her youngest and last, was a dozen years younger than she. He would look more like a son than a husband now. He had been her most disgraceful mistake, just a bit of bad thinking and carelessness. It was ironically proper that he should have been the ruin of her beauty. He had lived beside her like a mortal near a goddess, but, after the operation, he had looked at her once and disappeared. The others had been bounders, playboys, or headlong egotists, but Cecil Warren was simply contemptible. Yet it was he who would have been the father of the child! If she had gone through with the thing, perhaps that curse of sudden age would not have come over her face; perhaps, when the child lay in her arms, a normal instinct would have enriched her with happiness. But she always had detested children, and, when she thought of the nameless, faceless, unborn thing, she felt only a sickness of body and mind.
The fat hand of Bliss, dimpling at the wrist, slid the vermouth onto the table before her. She paid with a dollar bill and swayed her head a little to dismiss him, yet she found in herself a slight gratitude to the gross steward because he reminded her that men, for whom she had existed, are all insatiable pigs. She had a right to despise them and their greed far more than she regretted any evil she had done. She poured the veronal, to the last drop, into the glass and, holding up the pale gold of the liquor, watched the highlight that trembled in the heart of it; then she raised the daintily curving brim to her lips and lifted her eyes to the future.
The glass was cold. The chill from it struck through her entire body as though, at that moment, she had stepped from warmth and light into outer darkness. The poisoned vermouth moistened her lips, but they would not part to receive it. Bliss would find her sleeping too heavily to be roused; she would be carried to the ship’s hospital where that iron-faced Doctor Nash would look at her and quickly understand. She would soon be gone, and the ship would travel on with all its lights shining, its passengers deep in the slumber of
the well fed, its lookout peering anxiously through the mist. But they could not see even as far as the first step of the journey which she was to make alone.
She lowered the glass. Except for the last three years she had never been alone. Wherever she went, men appeared as mysteriously as migrating birds, and it was unnatural that she should drop beyond ken unattended. She was ready to leave a life which she detested, but she could not go out alone.
Other failures made it easier for her to give up this attempt. She rose with a sudden shrug of her shoulders and went quickly out onto the promenade. The mist was less, or the moon seemed stronger on the starboard side where the long row of steamer chairs had been folded and roped in standing groups except for one blanketed figure which still reclined in a solitary chair. It was only recently that loneliness in others had attracted Louise Lombard, and she recognized the novelty of the attraction as she veered a little toward the sleeper. It was a woman. Not the moonlight but a very dim glow from a window fell on her face, and Louise Lombard sheered away suddenly.
It was Katherine Wayland who was hurrying to Europe to join her husband before her child was born. She looked paler than ever and yet ethereally pretty, also; the full coming of womanhood made the face of the girl lovely, but even the doubled folds of the blankets could not hide the swollen distortion of her body.
Louise Lombard spat out a breath and then ran her hands down over the slender smoothness of her body. There are two kinds of women, she thought, and there have always been two kinds; and God must have intended it so. Just as some men hoard their money, adding bit by bit to build up security, there are others, her men, who threw it to the wind of a good time. Also, everyone has a right to her own opinion.
She made the round of the deck slowly because her thoughts stopped her now and then. When she came to the port door of the smoking room, she looked in not with any purpose of entering but because she had a curious desire to see the shining of that glass of golden vermouth which had death hidden so carefully under the bitter of the wormwood. She was in time to see Bliss pick up the abandoned drink and carry it toward the bar; he was still in profile when he poured the vermouth down his throat.