by Max Brand
The crowd had not come to hear the plea of Hole-inthe-Wall Barrett, simply because it was not known until the last moment that he was taking over the case for the defense; but the moment his burly figure appeared, swaggering toward a chair, a hum and then a whisper and then a voice passed through the crowd. His honor removed his glasses and frowned. The clerk rapped for order.
From that moment everyone waited; everyone was expectant. The prosecution was uneasy; the district attorney drank many glasses of water; the jurors set their teeth as if they were resolving their collective minds that they would not be budged from their duty even by a John Barrett. They scowled and nudged one another with assurances of immovability; they smiled upon the district attorney; they frowned upon Harry McCurtney and John Barrett.
The proceedings passed quickly. The district attorney made a very eloquent speech, painting in colors of crimson and black the damnable crime of this treacherous boy who could poison his uncle while the murdered man was drinking his nephew’s long life and happiness. The jury shook its collective head and scowled again on John Barrett, as if they dared him to come on and fight now. But all the time Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett sat teetering slowly back and forth in his armchair, staring blankly from face to face and picking his teeth. As has been said before, he was not only a villain, but a very vulgar man.
The prosecutor’s case was in. There was only the plea of John Barrett to be heard. The judge frowned his defiance on Barrett; the district attorney did likewise; the jury deepened its scowls; the fair mourners covered their faces and waited.
Barrett rose in the most matter-of-fact manner, with the most unmoved face, and crossed to the table on which stood the damning exhibit, the vial of poison. He finished picking his teeth, but continued to chew the toothpick. Indeed, he was a very vulgar man.
“Your honor and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “the prosecution has proved conclusively that certain drops from this bottle were poured by the defendant into a glass of whisky, which was drunk by William McCurtney, who thereafter died.”
It was like the fall of the first sods on the coffin. The defense was throwing down its cards. McCurtney raised his head; a greenish-yellow was invading the pallor of his poetic face. Something extremely un-poetic was in his eyes.
“The court has been informed by various experts that the contents of this bottle are deadly poison. If they are, unquestionably the defendant is guilty of murder, most damnable murder.”
It was a strange exordium. The crowd frowned with wonder and waited for the appeal which must follow— sounding periods, moving eloquence. But it must be always remembered that our villain was a most vulgar man.
He raised the little vial.
“The proof of the pudding,” he said, “is in the eating.”
And he drank the liquid in the vial—he drained it slowly to the last drop. Then he turned and extended an arm of command over the jury, which had arisen to the last man, staring upon him with pallid faces and open mouths.
“Now set that man free!” he thundered, and strode from the courtroom.
The man was set free. The jury was out one and one-half minutes before it reached its verdict. And the first one to get to the acquitted man, who sat as if stunned, with wandering eyes, was Elizabeth Barrett. Love will find a way, even through a courtroom jam.
A note was brought to McCurtney; they read it together.
“Bring Elizabeth to my house, McCurtney,” ran the note. “I have something to say to you both.”
As they sat in her car, she said:
“He knows, Harry!”
“Knows what?” asked Harry.
“About us,” said Elizabeth tenderly.
“About which?” said the hero vaguely.
“About our love, dear,” explained the beautiful woman.
“My God!” said the hero. “Stop the car! Turn it about!”
“Harry!” cried the beautiful woman. “You aren’t afraid?”
“Afraid?” stammered the hero. “No, of course not!”
“Poor dear! Of course that hideous trial has destroyed your nerves; but think of the long years of beautiful peace which we will spend together!”
“John Barrett!” muttered the hero. “He knows?”
“I told him.”
“Elizabeth, were you mad, to tell that brute of a man?”
“He didn’t care. In fact, that’s how I induced him to defend you.”
The hero wiped his brow.
“He won’t oppose,” said the beautiful woman, and she looked out the window with something of a sigh. “He won’t hinder us in anything. I suppose—I suppose the divorce will be easily granted me. And then—”
“Yes, yes!” murmured the hero. “But let’s talk about that later. The important thing now is John Barrett.”
“We’ll talk to him in a moment. It won’t take long. I suppose he wants to make the necessary arrangements for the—the divorce.”
She leaned back against the cushion and smiled that twentieth-century smile.
“By Heaven!” said the hero, “I don’t really know whether you’re glad or sorry, Elizabeth.”
“Neither do I,” she answered, and then, opening her eyes suddenly to the matter of fact: “Neither do I know whether I’m gladder to have my freedom, or sorrier to wade through the disgrace of the divorce court.”
“Hm!” said the hero.
The car stopped in front of the columned entrance to the Barrett home.
“Aren’t you coming, Harry?” she asked with some impatience.
“Give me time, dear,” said the hero. “My wits are still back there in the courtroom waiting for John Barrett to begin his appeal.”
“And mine,” said the beautiful woman, “are in the bright future!”
And again she smiled the twentieth-century smile.
I I I
They entered, and a servant told them that Mr. Barrett expected them in his private library. They climbed to the third story.
“This climb,” smiled Elizabeth, when they arrived, a little breathless, at the door, “is the only thing, I’m sure, which keeps John from becoming stout.”
“Hm!” said the hero.
They entered, and the door clicked behind them. It was a circular room, with a vaulted ceiling. The walls were lined with unbroken rows of books. There was not even a window; the air came through two ventilators. John Barrett stood in front of an open fireplace with his back to them, so that they could not tell, at first, exactly what he was doing there.
“We are here, John,” said Elizabeth in a rather thin voice.
“Oh!” boomed Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett. “Are you here?”
And as he turned half toward them they discerned his employment—he was heating the end of a stout poker in a bed of white-hot coals.
“Good God!” whispered the hero.
He seized the knob of the door; but it did not budge. He could not even elicit a rattle from it when he shook it frantically.
“The door locks with a spring,” explained John Barrett, turning squarely toward them, and still twirling the poker in the coals.
“Help!” yelled the hero.
“Harry!” said the beautiful woman in some disdain.
“It is often necessary for me to hold the most secret conferences here,” said the villain, “and therefore I have had these walls built so thick that no sounds can enter or leave. The room is impervious to noise. It is necessary, because some really strange things have happened here.”
“What do you mean?” said the hero, his voice changed beyond recognition.
“It is a suggestion,” said the impassive villain, “for those who desire privacy. A room like this, for instance, would be ideal for writing your poetry, McCurtney.”
“John!” said the beautiful woman sharply. “What are you driving at?”
In that vulgar atmosphere it was no wonder if she had learned to use slang. The hero, however, did not seem to notice it. His curiosity, for the moment, overwhelmed a
ny other emotions.
“How in the name of Heaven,” he said, “did you survive that poison?”
“Was it poison?” queried the villain. “Well, albumen coagulates and collects around certain poisons. I had swallowed several raw eggs just before I entered the courtroom. It is not a new trick. The moment I left I was taken by two doctors to a private room, and my stomach was pumped out.”
“Oh!” said the hero scornfully. “I thought it was some ingenious thing you did!”
“Oh!” said the villain. “Did you?”
“John, why have you sent for us?” said the beautiful woman.
Barrett buried the poker in the coals so deep that it would not topple out, produced one of his villainous long cigars and lighted it. He then picked up a riding whip which had fallen to the floor, and hung it again above the fireplace.
“It is about your leaving,” said the villain, and took the handle of the poker.
“Have you made up your mind to oppose me?” she asked.
“If you love this man,” he said in his calm voice, “I sha’n’t raise a hand to stop you or to hinder your happiness. I would even drink poison again to help you along.”
“You?” said the beautiful woman.
“Because I love you,” said the villain.
“You?” said the beautiful woman.
“Rot!” said the hero.
“But,” went on the villain, “if you really care for this fellow here—this sneaking cur who makes my hand itch—if you really care for him, I’m sure that I can get along without you.”
“Do you mean—?” cried the hero.
“I mean, Elizabeth,” said the villain, “that I’ve probably made many mistakes in my treatment of you. I’ve never been a man of many words—outside the courtroom. I’ve usually depended on actions instead. After I married you, I didn’t think you required more proofs of my love. If you do, I’ll try to give them to you—not in words, because this is not a courtroom; but I want you to know that I’ve crossed the line from my old life and stepped into a new. This is the proof.”
He drew out the poker from the coals. It sparkled and glittered and radiated snapping sparks in showers. The iron indeed, seemed instinct with a terrible life, a volition of its own.
“God!” whispered the hero, and cowered against the locked door.
The beautiful woman said nothing at all.
Coming to a point halfway across the room, the villain took the glowing iron and with it seared a smoking furrow, crooked and deep, across the polished wood from one side of the room to the other. The mark still fumed when he stepped back and cast the poker clanging on the hearth. It was an ugly mark, and a melodramatic thing to do, but the villain was a vulgar man.
“If you doubt that I love you hereafter,” said the villain, “don’t wait for me to tell you, but come up here and look at this mark on the floor, Elizabeth. You’ve done to me what I’ve done here.”
“John!” whispered his wife.
He turned his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. Truly, a very vulgar man!
“Elizabeth!” groaned the hero. “Are you going to leave me?”
“John!” whispered the beautiful woman, and she ran across the smoking furrow on the floor, stretching out her arms to her husband.
He removed his cigar.
“You will be able to open that other door,” he said.
She opened the door and went out.
“And now?” asked the hero hoarsely.
“And now,” said the villain, “I have always been a man of few words.”
So saying, he took down the riding whip from above the fireplace. The room was impervious to noise. It was necessary, because some strange things happened there.
TRAILIN’! (1919)
To ROBERT HOBART DAVIS, Maker of Books and Men
CHAPTER I
“LA-A-A-DIES AN’ GEN’L’MUN”
All through the exhibition the two sat unmoved; yet on the whole it was the best Wild West show that ever stirred sawdust in Madison Square Garden and it brought thunders of applause from the crowded house. Even if the performance could not stir these two, at least the throng of spectators should have drawn them, for all New York was there, from the richest to the poorest; neither the combined audiences of a seven-day race, a prize-fight, or a community singing festival would make such a cosmopolitan assembly.
All Manhattan came to look at the men who had lived and fought and conquered under the limitless skies of the Far West, free men, wild men—one of their shrill whoops banished distance and brought the mountain desert into the very heart of the unromantic East. Nevertheless from all these thrills these two men remained immune.
To be sure the smaller tilted his head back when the horses first swept in, and the larger leaned to watch when Diaz, the wizard with the lariat, commenced to whirl his rope; but in both cases their interest held no longer than if they had been old vaudevillians watching a series of familiar acts dressed up with new names.
The smaller, brown as if a thousand fierce suns and winds had tanned and withered him, looked up at last to his burly companion with a faint smile.
“They’re bringing on the cream now, Drew, but I’m going to spoil the dessert.”
The other was a great, grey man whom age apparently had not weakened but rather settled and hardened into an ironlike durability; the winds of time or misfortune would have to break that stanch oak before it would bend.
He said: “We’ve half an hour before our train leaves. Can you play your hand in that time?”
“Easy. Look at ’em now—the greatest gang of liars that never threw a diamond hitch! Ride? I’ve got a ten-year kid home that would laugh at ’em all. But I’ll show ’em up. Want to know my little stunt?”
“I’ll wait and enjoy the surprise.”
The wild riders who provoked the scorn of the smaller man were now gathering in the central space; a formidable crew, long of hair and brilliant as to bandannas, while the announcer thundered through his megaphone:
“La-a-a-dies and gen’l’mun! You see before you the greatest band of subduers and breakers of wild horses that ever rode the cattle ranges. Death defying, reckless, and laughing at peril, they have never failed; they have never pulled leather. I present ‘Happy’ Morgan!”
Happy Morgan, yelling like one possessed of ten shrill-tongued demons, burst on the gallop away from the others, and spurring his horse cruelly, forced the animal to race, bucking and plunging, half way around the arena and back to the group. This, then, was a type of the dare-devil horse breaker of the Wild West? The cheers travelled in waves around and around the house and rocked back and forth like water pitched from side to side in a monstrous bowl.
When the noise abated somewhat, “And this, la-a-a-dies and gen’l’mun, is the peerless, cowpuncher, ‘Bud Reeves.’”
Bud at once imitated the example of Happy Morgan, and one after another the five remaining riders followed suit. In the meantime a number of prancing, kicking, savage-eyed horses were brought into the arena and to these the master of ceremonies now turned his attention.
“From the wildest regions of the range we have brought mustangs that never have borne the weight of man. They fight for pleasure; they buck by instinct. If you doubt it, step down and try ’em. One hundred dollars to the man who sticks on the back of one of ’em—but we won’t pay the hospital bill!”
He lowered his megaphone to enjoy the laughter, and the small man took this opportunity to say: “Never borne the weight of a man! That chap in the dress-suit, he tells one lie for pleasure and ten more from instinct. Yep, he has his hosses beat. Never borne the weight of man! Why, Drew, I can see the saddle-marks clear from here; I got a mind to slip down there and pick up the easiest hundred bones that ever rolled my way.”
He rose to make good his threat, but Drew cut in with: “Don’t be a damn fool, Werther. You aren’t part of this show.”
“Well, I will be soon. Watch me! There goes Ananias on his
second wind.”
The announcer was bellowing: “These man-killing mustangs will be ridden, broken, beaten into submission in fair fight by the greatest set of horse-breakers that ever wore spurs. They can ride anything that walks on four feet and wears a skin; they can—”
Werther sprang to his feet, made a funnel of his hand, and shouted: “Yi-i-i-ip!”
If he had set off a great quantity of red fire he could not more effectively have drawn all eyes upon him. The weird, shrill yell cut the ringmaster short, and a pleased murmur ran through the crowd. Of course, this must be part of the show, but it was a pleasing variation.
“Partner,” continued Werther, brushing away the big hand of Drew which would have pulled him down into his seat; “I’ve seen you bluff for two nights hand running. There ain’t no man can bluff all the world three times straight.”
The ringmaster retorted in his great voice: “That sounds like good poker. What’s your game?”
“Five hundred dollars on one card!” cried Werther, and he waved a fluttering handful of greenbacks. “Five hundred dollars to any man of your lot—or to any man in this house that can ride a real wild horse.”
“Where’s your horse?”
“Around the corner in a Twenty-sixth Street stable. I’ll have him here in five minutes.”
“Lead him on,” cried the ringmaster, but his voice was not quite so loud.
Werther muttered to Drew:
“Here’s where I hand him the lemon that’ll curdle his cream,” and ran out of the box and straight around the edge of the arena. New York, murmuring and chuckling through the vast galleries of the Garden, applauded the little man’s flying coat-tails.
He had not underestimated the time; in a little less than his five minutes the doors at the end of the arena were thrown wide and Werther reappeared. Behind him came two stalwarts leading between them a rangy monster. Before the blast of lights and the murmurs of the throng the big stallion reared and flung himself back, and the two who lead him bore down with all their weight on the halter ropes. He literally walked down the planks into the arena, a strange, half-comical, half-terrible spectacle. New York burst into applause. It was a trained horse, of course, but a horse capable of such training was worth applause.